


Mendings

by chiiyo86



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Siblings, Time Travel, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-22 07:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30034929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: After four years in the Apocalypse, Five manages to travel back to his family, hoping to land before Ben's death so he can prevent it. Unfortunately, he misses by a week.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison & Diego & Klaus & Luther & Vanya & Number Six | Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves | Umbrella Academy
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been toying with this idea for a while, so I'm glad to be finally writing it. Be warned that it's going to be pretty angsty, though it'll end on a hopeful note (Ben will remain dead, though; sorry!). I'll try to stick to a schedule of one chapter a week. Hope you enjoy it!

When they were eight, Ben had found in their father’s library a book entitled _The History of Death: Burial Customs and Funeral Rites, from the Ancient World to Modern Times_ , and had taken to reading chapters of it to Five at night when one of them couldn’t sleep. None of them had names at the time, so Ben had been ‘Six’ and Five hadn’t stood out for being just ‘Five.’ He couldn’t remember most of the book, as the topic had bored him to tears—or to sleep, which had been sort of the point—but the one thing that had stuck with him was the tumuli. A tumulus had seemed such a simple, elegant sort of grave, blending in with the world around it without drawing too much attention to itself. 

Of course, in the end it had been more a matter of convenience. Trying to dig a blackened, fire-hardened ground to bury his now adult-sized siblings had proven to be an arduous task, so the best he could do was let them lie in shallow holes and pile pieces of rubbles on them, until each of them had their own tumulus. Later, when it had become obvious that he wouldn’t be leaving this ravaged hellhole as quickly as he’d hoped, he’d made tumuli for Ben and Vanya too, and he’d marked each of them with however many stones needed for their rank, so he would be able to tell them apart. He had known by then from Vanya’s book that Ben had died many years before the end of the world, and even though he had no clue on what had happened to Vanya herself, at least he knew she must be dead too. Everyone was dead. If there had been any survivors in the city, surely Five would have met them after four years of turning around every stone of it and examining every charred body. 

Today, he was sitting in front of the line of his siblings’ tumuli, in the middle of the empty space that he’d painstakingly cleared so he could make the graves. They were arranged out of order, since his grave-making had been commanded by how easily he could dig them up from under the ruins and drag them out—so Klaus first, then Diego, then Allison, and finally Luther, whose surprisingly massive body had been almost impossible to move. Number Four, Number Two, Number Three, Number One, and then Number Six and Seven to complete the set. It offended something in Five, though he knew he was being ridiculous. Mainly, he thought he ought to have left an empty spot for himself.

“But I’m not going to die here, am I?” he said out loud. He drank from the small flask he’d found in some ruin or other and had filled with rum he’d found in some cellar or other. “I can’t be dying here.”

He addressed his words to the mannequin he’d been carrying along with him in his red wagon. He’d quickly realized that he would need something to deliver his thoughts to if he wanted to stay sane and Dolores had been there, among the ruins of a department store, almost intact, bright-eyed and smiling mysteriously. Waiting for him, he sometimes thought, then chided himself for it. When they were kids, Allison and Klaus used to play with dolls, dress them up, hold whole tea parties for them, and Five had always held a profound disdain for the activity. And yet here he was, talking to a mannequin, changing her clothes sometimes, putting a hat on her head when it was cold and perching sunglasses on her nose when it was sunny—at least once it started getting sunny again. He felt self-conscious about it, even though there was no one around to pass judgement on him, but Dolores had a presence to her. There were moments when it almost felt like she was actually listening to him. 

“I can’t die here,” he went on, “because I’m going back home today. I’ve checked my calculations so many times, Dolores. I’m sure I’ll get it right this time.” Preventing an objection he felt coming, he hurriedly added, “I’m as sure as I can be. I can’t avoid a certain amount of risk. And if I die, well—” He thrusted the hand holding the flask forward, making the alcohol inside slosh noisily. “—there’s no one left around to regret it.”

He slanted a look at Dolores, feeling obscurely guilty for what he’d just said. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought. This place was getting to him; if he stayed here any longer, he’d lose himself to madness entirely. 

“I’ve come to say goodbye,” he said, talking to his siblings’ graves this time. “Or maybe ‘see you soon’—hopefully that. But I don’t know—”

He lapsed into silence. If he died trying to time-travel, no one would know what had happened to him. He’d forever remain an unsolved missing person case. Maybe his corpse would be spat out to another timeline, where he’d become an unsolved murder case. And then the world would end in April 2019 and Five’s little time-travel mishap would be no more than a blip on the smooth course of the Apocalypse, a minor error quickly corrected by the all-mighty Timeline. At least, Five would be too dead to care. Would it matter that he’d tried? He wished he believed in a God that sat up there, saw all he’d been going through and would acknowledge that he’d done what he could, but the concept had always seemed too foolish and sentimental for him to give it credence.

“I miss you,” he whispered to the graves. “I didn’t think it was possible to hurt that much just from missing people. I hadn’t missed anyone before and I’m just so _tired_ of it. I hadn’t realized what I had until I didn’t have it anymore.”

He sniffed and wiped a dirty hand across his eyes. Gah, it must be the alcohol making him all maudlin and blubbery. He hated crying, because in the state of perpetual mild dehydration he was in, it never failed to give him terrible headaches. 

“Okay, so just… Hold on tight. I’m coming back and I’ll—I’ll fix everything. I swear I will.”

He spread some of the rum from his flask in a half-circle around himself—something else that Ben had read to him in _The History of Death: Burial Customs and Funeral Rites, from the Ancient World to Modern Times_ , the main source of inspiration for all of his silly funeral rites to his siblings. With that last gesture he turned his back on the graves and dragged his wagon away, further down the destroyed street. He could have stayed there, as good a place as any other, but seeing the graves pulled his mood down and he needed to keep his focus on the task at hand. He walked aimlessly, contemplating the ruins around him as though walking through his own goodbye tour. The fires that had been burning when he’d landed here four years ago had long been extinguished. Ash had stopped raining from the sky about eighteen months after his arrival, but most of the time the sky was a murky grey-brown color and winds swept restlessly over the dead lands, so often blowing sand and ashes in his eyes that he had to procure himself goggles to shield them. He wouldn’t miss anything about this place, and yet fear of the unknown tugged at his heart and he found himself thinking that it wouldn’t hurt to wait one more day, check his calculations one more time. At thirteen he hadn’t known that kind of fear, stupidly convinced that he could handle anything that time-travel would throw at him. How little had he known! At seventeen, he’d learned that particular lesson well, but he also couldn’t let fear bind him forever. 

“Today,” he told Dolores in his firmest voice. “I’m leaving today.”

Looking down at the wagon that held all his worldly possessions, he sighed. He’d been camping here and there for the past four years, scavenging what he could, and all the items in this wagon were things he valued enough to carry along with him. In this world where he’d had little to rely on, he hated to part with any of it, but he didn’t have a choice. Carrying too much with him would increase the traveling mass and offset his calculations. So much could go wrong that he had to control as many variables as he could, which was why he’d decided to only bring things he could carry on himself. This eliminated Dolores right off the bat, which hurt more than he liked to admit. His blankets, cardboards, ropes, candle bits, pans were also too cumbersome. His Umbrella Academy knickknacks… He stared regretfully at the small case with the Umbrella Academy pins tacked on it, which was filled with action figures, posters, comics and cut-out press articles, most of which dated from after he’d left. They were entirely superfluous, though, mere sentimentality on his part. 

“Some of the books, maybe?” he murmured to himself, avoiding Dolores’ eyes. 

Kneeling next to the wagon, he started rummaging in it. Vanya’s book had to go with him, of course—a lot of his calculations were in it, for one, and also he couldn’t bear parting from it. Same for the notes he’d dug up from a collapsed house and which had helped him tremendously in advancing his time-travel calculations—he didn’t know the author’s name and why they had been interested in time-travel, but he owed them a debt he would only be able to repay when he would save the world. If he didn’t land on the date he was aiming for, at least he wouldn’t need to start all over again if he kept the notes. 

“A knife can always be useful, right?” he said, patting the knife he’d bound around his thigh. 

It was one of Diego’s custom-made knives, which Five had taken from his brother’s dead body, but a knife could serve as both a weapon and a tool and was a worthwhile item to have. In his jacket pocket, Five had the glass eye he’d pried out of Luther’s fingers, wrapped in a piece of cloth, his only lead to whoever had caused the Apocalypse. 

“All right,” he said, getting back on his feet. He looked at Dolores, wondering how silly it would be to tell her goodbye. Well, no one but him would know about it, right? “Goodbye,” he said. “Thank you for everything. And sorry that I—” He trailed off, feeling that he was about to veer into uncomfortable territory. “Wish me luck, because I’ll need it.”

He stepped away from the wagon, as much to separate himself from it as because he didn’t want to risk pulling it into the vortex with him. He shoved a hand inside his jacket to get his notes out, even though each and every number was etched into his mind. He whispered them under his breath, a comforting litany. He closed his eyes. Closed his fists. Focused.

 _Here goes nothing._

—-

It felt to Vanya as if the dinner table had gotten longer over the past week. With Ben dead and Five still missing, their two empty seats separated Vanya from the rest of their siblings. One or two of them could have moved to fill the vacant spots, but of course none of them had and now the gap that had always kept her apart from the others was made glaring. She could have been sitting at another table by herself. 

Dinner was a silent affair, as it always was. Vanya kept her eyes on her plate so she wouldn’t have to look at Ben and Five’s empty chairs, and the only signs of life she perceived were the sounds of clinking cutlery, chewing, smacking lips. When she had her eyes down like this, she always had the feeling that her father was looking at her from all the way across the table. Even outside of meals, she often felt like he was watching her, observing her for some strange reason—why would he, since she was the most insignificant of his children? The others were probably absorbed in their meal and unlikely to pay her any attention. They had been completely ignoring her since Ben’s funeral. She didn’t even know what exactly had happened to him. When she’d asked about it after the mission, Diego had blown up at her, Allison had burst into tears and Luther had paled and shaken his head, saying that she ‘didn’t need to know that.’ She hadn’t dared asking again. 

Now no one talked to her, Klaus talked to no one, and Allison, Luther and Diego spent all of their time fighting with each other. Most of it was Luther and Diego, unsurprisingly, but Vanya had heard Allison and Diego argue a few times too, and on one memorable occasion even Luther and Allison. From what she’d glimpsed, Vanya gathered that there was a lot of shifting blame about Ben’s death going on, but she’d decided that she was past caring. She’d stopped leaving the lights on for Five or making him sandwiches, because she’d finally accepted that he wouldn’t come back and it was stupid to keep hoping. She was seventeen now and had realized that if her family didn’t care about her, then she should simply stop caring about them too. What Ben’s death had highlighted was what a mess they all were, barely a family at all. Vanya would be better off on her own, trying to make a living out of her music. No one would miss her here and the outside world couldn’t be as cruel as her family. Let them tear each other apart for all she cared.

She’d been mulling over those thoughts and chewing on a piece of lamb meat for so long that it had become mush in her mouth. Her hands were hurting from how hard they were clamped around her knife and fork. Her plate was still half-full and she wasn’t sure for how long they’d been eating. Dad didn’t like it when they took too long to finish their plate, so Vanya risked a look up, checking whether she’d lost so much time that they were all finished with the main course and waiting for her. But once she looked, she saw that her siblings and her father were all still eating, their heads bent down over their plates. Mom was standing one step behind Dad’s chair as usual, her hands joined in her front. Herr Carlson was droning on in the background. Vanya’s skin prickled with a strange feeling of anticipation. What was wrong with her? Meals were the dullest part of the day. Nothing exciting ever happened at meals, or at least not since Five had—

When a flash of blue light exploded over their heads, Vanya yelped and pushed back her chair, closing her eyes and instinctively putting her arms up to protect her face. Something crashed onto the table, breaking glasses and plates. The others yelled too and their chairs screeched over the floor as they did the same as Vanya. What was happening? Were they under attack? 

“What the hell—”

“Who is that?”

“Wait, isn’t that—?”

Reluctantly, Vanya opened her eyes and lowered her arms. She started to slide off her chair, ready to get up and run if needed. If they were being attacked by the Umbrella Academy’s enemies, she would be completely useless to the fight. Frowning, she looked over at the table. Prone in the middle of it, among broken glass and porcelain, was… a person, was as much as Vanya could ascertain at first. A person on the smaller side, which made her relax a little. He or she was groaning, clumsily trying to push themselves up on shaking limbs. Their clothes were filthy and they wore a scarf of uncertain color wrapped around their neck, a bomber hat and aviator’s goggles. Once they’d managed to push themselves up enough that Vanya could see their face, she could tell this was a boy. An oddly familiar-looking boy. He looked back at her, blinking.

“Vanya,” he said in a breath.

Vanya’s heart was pounding and her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. This couldn’t be happening. She was imagining it. Nothing good ever happened here. 

“Holy shit, is that _Five_?” Klaus exclaimed loudly.

Five—because that was him under the layers of dirt, Vanya couldn’t deny it anymore—gave his surroundings a dazed look. He stared at each of their siblings, then twisted around to look at Dad and then at Mom, who gave him a bright smile.

Five made a garbled sound, then said, “I did it. I made it.” He let out a wheeze that might have been a laugh. “I can’t believe it. Dolores, I—”

He wavered, pitched forward and crashed again face first on the table, seemingly unconscious. A stunned silence followed, no one moving or saying anything, all the eyes fixed on Five’s still form. Dad sighed and got his pocket handkerchief out to clean the droplets of tomato sauce that had splashed on his face. 

“Grace, please remove Number Five from the table and take him to the infirmary.” He addressed to the rest of his children a hard stare, as if they were responsible for their brother crashing dinner time. “Children, go to your rooms.” He staved off the burst of protestations with a raised hand. “I will hear none of it. And tomorrow’s training starts at the same time as usual. Your brother’s untimely return shouldn’t change anything to your routine.”

As Vanya followed the others out of the dining room, she risked a glance back and saw Mom gather a limp Five in her arms like a sleeping child. Where had he gone all this time? What had he been doing? 

—-

As he surfaced back to consciousness, Five tried his best to cling to sleep. He’d been having the most wonderful dream and wanted to enjoy it for as long as he could. Reality was harsh, a constant fight for survival; right now he felt warm and comfortable and the images of his siblings from his dream were still lingering in his mind. He knew that they would be gone all too soon, shredded by daytime’s sharp teeth. He groaned, turning his face against the pillow and grasping for the dark depths of sleep, then his half-awake mind screeched to a halt—a pillow? He generally slept with his head on his arm or on a folded blanket. His other senses started to register outside signals as his feeling of alarm grew. The quiet alerted him first. Even when the wind was at its quietest, he generally could hear it as a persistent low moan of agony. It smelled something weird, too, something that he hadn’t smelled in a long time and which took him a moment to identify—disinfectant, was what it was. Where the hell was he?

His eyes still closed, he explored his surroundings with his hand, trying to find his knife. Nothing he felt made sense—he was lying on a hard leather-covered mattress, under a sheet rather than under one of his scratchy blankets, and he wore light cotton fabric, like… pajamas? Five’s eyes flew open and the first thing he saw was a large picture of the vascular system that hung on a wall entirely paneled with wood. It was a familiar sight. Five gripped the edges of his bedding with clammy hands. Was he still dreaming? Or were the images from his dream actually—

“Oh, you’re awake, Five dear. Good.”

Heels clacking on the floor, Mom approached his bed with a wide smile. She wore a white nurse apron pinned over her checkered dress and looked absolutely identical to the day he’d left, down to the length of her blond curls and to the shade of her red lipstick. She rested a warm hand on his forehead. Five sucked in a breath; he hadn’t been touched by another living being in over four years and everything about Mom’s outward appearance and body mimicked a living being to perfection. 

“Hmm, it doesn’t feel like you have a fever,” she said. 

Her voice had that playful lilt that she always used, even when she was scolding them. Her unvaried mood used to drive Five crazy but now that familiar tone was enough to bring tears to his eyes. 

“Mom,” he said, his voice breaking.

“Oh, Five. Don’t cry, sweetheart, you look like you’re dehydrated.” As Five swallowed, trying to find something to say that wouldn’t make him burst into tears, she went on, “Your father wants me to give you a comprehensive physical exam. Are you feeling up for it?”

Five nodded, pushing himself up. Looking down, he saw that he was wearing the blue pajamas of his childhood. They were a little big on him, so they must belong to one of his brothers—or maybe one of his sisters, since the pajamas were unisex. The thought made his chest ache. His brothers and sisters were right there in the house, alive and well. He could get up and go talk to them if he wanted to.

“Where are the others?”

“Your father sent them to their rooms,” Mom said as she snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Your arrival created quite a commotion!”

“Can I see them?” Five asked, unable to keep the longing out of his voice. 

“Later, dear.”

“Later when?”

“Your father wants you to rest a little longer. You know what a rowdy bunch your siblings can be!”

“But I feel fine,” Five protested, throwing his legs out of bed. His naked feet hit the shockingly cold floor. “I want to see them now.”

“Settle down, dear.” Mom placed a hand on Five’s shoulder, and although her touch was light, he knew just how much strength she could put in it if she tried. “Your father wants to talk to you first.”

“Right, of course,” Five muttered. 

Old, near-forgotten resentment churned in his belly as he recalled all the times his mother had served as a gentle enforcer to his father’s will. It wasn’t her fault, of course, she was just programmed to be that way, but it gave a bitter aftertaste to her shows of affection. This was something Diego had always been blind to. 

“All right,” Mom said cheerfully. “Lift your top, dear, so I can listen to your lungs.”

The air in the Apocalypse had remained thick with smoke and ashes for so long that Five’s lungs were probably not in the best of state, but he complied without protest, hoping that if the physical exam was quick enough, his father would allow him to see his siblings tonight. 

“Now be a good boy and take a deep breath.”

As it turned out, a _comprehensive_ physical exam was pretty time-consuming. Mom examined him from head to toe, palpating all his limbs, took his temperature and read his blood pressure, made him pee in a bottle for a urine test, drew blood from him, did chest X-rays and made him walk on a treadmill for heart stress tests. Five gritted his teeth through all of it, trying to hide his growing impatience as well as the exhaustion that made him yearn to lie down again. If he showed how tired he was, he would shoot down his chance to see his siblings before tomorrow. To distract himself, he tried to recapture the images from what he knew now wasn’t a dream, but a memory. He remembered Vanya’s face best of all, her wide surprised eyes. She still wore her hair long with a severe fringe barring her forehead but her face was longer and narrower. Then Five had seen Diego, and Klaus—Klaus had said his name—and Allison, and Luther, and finally his father and mother. Five replayed the images again and again, dread digging into his stomach. He couldn’t remember seeing Ben. His landing on the dinner table was so blurry, still tinged with unreality, that he couldn’t be sure that Ben hadn’t been there. Maybe Five’s memory had holes in it, or maybe Ben had ducked under the table when Five had crashed down. 

“Mom,” Five said once his mom was done with all her tests, hopping back on the bed. His head ached and his lungs tickled, making him want to cough. “What day is it, exactly?”

The words, said in Mom’s chipper voice, hit him like a club at the back of the head, “Today is February 25, 2007.”

Too late, Five thought numbly. He was too late by a goddamn week.


	2. Chapter 2

Allison expected Dad to let them see Five the next day, but she should have known better. Mom said that their father wanted ‘Five to rest more, dear,’ and of course Dad himself was unavailable for questioning. By the end of the day, Allison had decided to take the matter into her own hands. It was that time in the evening when Mom would be cleaning up and doing the dishes, while they were supposed to be getting ready for bed, Dad worked in his study and Pogo had retired to his room, so Five would be alone at the infirmary. When Allison tried to rope the others into her plan, though, her brothers proved surprisingly resistant. 

“We should wait until Dad lets us see him,” Luther said anxiously when she asked him to come. “He isn’t going to keep Five cooped in the infirmary forever.”

“But why isn’t he letting us see him _now_?”

“He must have his reasons.”

“Don’t you want to see Five? See if he’s okay, ask him where the hell he was?”

Luther sighed and turned his head toward his window, even though it was dark outside and there was nothing to see. He was already wearing his pajamas, ready to go to bed at the exact time Dad wanted him to. “Of course I do, and we’ll be able to talk to him when Dad lets us.”

Allison bit back her frustration and left Luther’s room. Talking to Luther had become almost impossible. He’d always been a rule-follower, but it used to be that he could be talked into bending them a little. But since Ben—ever since what had happened to Ben, Luther had been devoted to following each of Dad’s commands to the letter. Allison knew why he acted that way, she got it, but he was drawing all the wrong conclusions from the events and she’d had no luck so far convincing him of it. 

Knocking on Klaus’ door got her no response. From the strong odor of weed that reached her even from behind the closed door, she knew not to count on him tonight. She hesitated before going to Diego, given what their relationship had been like lately, and it turned out that she’d been right. She found him lying on his bed, though he still wore his uniform, and throwing knives at the ceiling. 

“What do you think Mom will say when she’ll see that you’ve made holes in the ceiling?” Allison said, raising an eyebrow.

“Go away,” Diego replied, not responding to the provocation.

“I’m going to visit Five at the infirmary, no matter what Dad says,” she said. “You in or not?”

“What part of ‘go away’ don’t you understand?” Diego said, his voice straining with irritation, eyes still on the ceiling.

“Don’t you want to talk to Five and find out where he’s been?”

“We’ll know soon enough. Funny how he came back just now.”

Taken aback by the venomous bitterness in Diego’s voice, Allison asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Diego flicked his wrist and his next knife planted itself in the doorframe, close to Allison’s head. “Now _go. the fuck. away_.”

Allison didn’t startle, because she knew that Diego had total control over his knives and wouldn’t hurt her. He was all bark, most of the time—still a prick, though. She rolled her eyes and stomped away without another word, seething at how useless all of her brothers were. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Everyone stewing in self-pity on their own, no one talking to anyone else unless it was to argue? Five had chosen a hell of a time to come back.

As she made her way down the corridor, Allison’s footsteps faltered when she passed Vanya’s room. Would Vanya want to come with her? She’d been pretty close to Five when they were younger. But when Allison approached Vanya’s door, she heard violin music escape from the room. Vanya wasn’t supposed to play at that hour, but it wasn’t as though Allison could cast stones about breaking the rules. Still, Allison’s fist hovered in the air as she was about to knock. Vanya probably didn’t want to be disturbed when she was playing. Allison had always felt like playing the violin worked as a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign, that the music was a bubble that Vanya used as a refuge. Also, things had been so awkward since Ben had died. Despite what Vanya had said at the funeral, Allison couldn’t help but wonder whether her sister didn’t blame the rest of them for what had happened. With a sigh, Allison dropped her hand. Vanya probably didn’t want to see her, anyway.

She had snuck out of her room at night often enough that she didn’t have any trouble navigating the dark corridors up to the infirmary. There, she knocked lightly on the door and waited for a response with trepidation. A few seconds passed and it occurred to her that Five might be asleep, or in a bad enough state that he couldn’t get up, and she was debating whether to let herself in or go back to her room when the door opened on Five, whose eyes widened in shock when he saw her.

Finding herself face-to-face with her long-missing brother, Allison realized that she hadn’t prepared what to say to him. She was at a loss for words, something that didn’t happen to her very often. Five let her off the hook by being the first to talk. “Allison,” he said, a slight quiver to his voice. “Hey.”

“Dad isn’t letting us see you for now and, uh,” Allison said, tripping on her words, “I thought that I would—that maybe I—”

“Get in,” Five said. “Before Mom comes back.”

He moved to let her in, closed the door behind her and went to sit on the bed. She sat on a chair and examined him while he stared back at her silently, the look in his eyes as intense as it was indecipherable. The pajamas he wore floated around him; he’d grown up, but was only just as tall as she was, and painfully thin. His hair was at about chin-length but cut unevenly. He looked clean now, but having the dirt scrubbed off his face only served to underline how gaunt it was. His eyes were red and puffy, his hands scratched and bruised and his fingernails were a mess. 

“So,” they said at the same time, then chuckled awkwardly.

Should she go for a hug? They’d never been a family that hugged a lot, especially not Five—she couldn’t remember the last time he’d accepted physical affection, but they must have been very young. How much might that have changed in four years? Her hand twitched at her side as she tried to make herself move and she was irritated at herself when she couldn’t do it. She’d never been shy or indecisive, so what was wrong with her? 

“Where have you been?” she asked instead. 

He looked down at his damaged fingernails and said, “The future.”

“The future?” Allison gripped her seat in sudden excitement. “So you did it! You time-traveled! How far did you go?”

“Seventeen years in the future. April 2019.” He was still looking at his fingernails and spoke in an oddly dull tone. 

“Why didn’t you come back earlier? Wait, how long has it been for you?”

“Four years, six months, two days. I’m seventeen and eight months now.”

“We’re seventeen and five months—almost five months.”

Five glanced up at her, his lips stretching into an approximation of a smile. “So I’m the older brother, now.”

“As if,” Allison scoffed, slapping his knee with the back of her hand. “Three months don’t count. So it took you four years to come back, then? Or was it that you didn’t want to come back?”

“Of course I wanted to come back!” The vehemence of his reaction made Allison jump. He was fully looking at her now, and once again she was struck by the redness around his eyes, as though he’d been crying. “I tried everything to get back to you, worked on it every day, but it’s harder to travel backward than travel forward and when I finally managed it—” He turned his head away, his mouth twisting. “I know Ben died last week. I wanted to be back earlier but I—I botched it. Again. What happened to him?”

The sharpness of fresh grief took Allison’s breath away. Somehow, she hadn’t realized that Five must have just learned about Ben’s death. Mom had probably been the one to tell him. All those years that Five had been missing, the idea that he might still be alive had been part hope, part resentment. Because if he was alive, why hadn’t he come back already? Diego had loudly proclaimed that Five was a selfish bastard who must have found some place so much better than here that he didn’t think about them at all. It was generally easy to brush off the crap that came out of Diego’s mouth, but still Allison hadn’t been able to help doubt from trickling in. From how sincerely distraught Five acted now, though, it looked like Diego had missed the mark.

“Yeah, uh,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “We were on a mission. And—”

And there, words deserted her. They’d had to recount what happened during debriefing with Dad, but the numbness of shock had helped and Luther had done most of the talking. Having to relive it and then put it into words felt overwhelming and Allison gulped, wiping her clammy hands on her skirt. 

She didn’t have to go through with it in the end, as the door to the infirmary flew open. Allison was on her feet before she had time to think, chair pushed back hastily, because the forceful way the door had opened meant that it was neither Mom or Pogo who’d just entered.

“Number Three,” Dad said, his moustache quivering in disapproval. He held a red carton folder in his hand. “What are you doing out of your room?”

“I was visiting Five,” Allison said, even though what she’d been doing was obvious and nothing she said would change the outcome. “I wanted to see how he was.”

“I would have let you see your brother in due time, but impatience has always been your undoing, Number Three. Go to your room. We’ll discuss your punishment tomorrow.”

She could have protested, and sometimes she did, but she’d also learned to pick her battles. At least this got her out of explaining to Five what had happened to Ben. Dad would probably tell him everything. 

“Can I go to my room too?” Five asked. “I’m fine, I don’t need to be at the infirmary anymore.”

“We’ll have a talk before I let you do that.” Dad turned to Allison, frowning as though he wondered what she was still doing here. “Go on, now. To your room, I said.”

Dragging her feet, Allison complied while casting quick looks over her shoulder at her brother, trying to see if Five dreaded talking to their father. After all, he’d been out of Dad’s clutches for over four years. The look she caught on Five’s face was wary, guarded, but not fearful—paradoxically, he’d seemed more nervous when talking to her. Well, he’d always been hard-headed and confrontational, the one among them who feared their father the least. He was older now and had lived on his own for years, so he would probably be fine. 

—-

Five would be damned if he let his dad see how tense he was. This was his main thought as Dad loomed over him, coldly looking down. That thought was as much a reflex as anything else, his baseline on how to interact with his father. Of course he’d known that coming back would mean confronting his father again and he’d spent a lot of time mulling over what he would say to him. To be honest, he’d been tempted to lie, to pretend that his years away had been a deliberate move on his part and to make his return triumphal. But in the end, this was about more than his pride and he’d decided that telling Dad everything was the best course of action. Preventing the end of the world was the main reason behind the creation of the Umbrella Academy, so if anyone knew what to do about what would happen in 2019, it had to be Dad. Five had hoped to warn him about Ben’s death too, but—so much for that, right?

Knowing what he needed to do didn’t mean that Five had to like it. Dad had opened the folder he’d brought and was reading the documents inside, humming to himself from time to time. He could have read them before coming to the infirmary, or maybe he _had_ read them and was purposefully letting Five stew a little. Sitting on his bed and wearing nothing but pajamas and slippers, Five felt entirely too vulnerable, almost as though the past four years hadn’t happened and he was still thirteen, or even younger. It would have maybe been better to stand up for this, but he felt so tired. He’d been sleeping on and off the whole day and yet it didn’t seem to have made a dent in his exhaustion. Being well-rested wasn’t something he could remember feeling in the past four years, but between the double urgencies of survival and trying to find a way back to his family, he’d always managed to push through it. Now, though, whether it was because of time-travelling, or the shock of failing to save Ben, or the lack of immediate purpose, he felt as if all the energy had leaked out of his body, leaving him with rubber bones and a muddled mind.

“You show signs of starvation, dehydration, and I see on the X-rays that there’s some scarring on your lungs.” Dad adjusted his monocle and snapped the folder close. He had a little more white in his hair than Five remembered, but otherwise looked almost as unchanged as Mom. “What have you been doing with yourself, Number Five?”

“I time-traveled,” Five said, and a small, ridiculous part of him hoped that Dad would at least look faintly impressed.

He was disappointed on that front, because it was as impassively as ever that Dad asked, “When did you land? The future, I assume. And the return trip must have been harder, since you look a few years older.”

“I landed in April 2019,” Five said, his cheeks burning with humiliation, but determined to power through it. “There was nothing there. I mean, everything was destroyed and I couldn’t find anyone left alive. I found a newspaper dating April 1, 2019. Nothing in it indicated that there’d been a war going on or anything like that. As far as I could tell, it was all really sudden.”

No shock from Dad even at the mention of the end of all life on Earth, but he looked thoughtful. Pulling a ballpoint pen out of his breast pocket, he jotted down a few notes on a paper inside his folder. Not for the first time, Five asked himself what his dad was always scribbling about. Was it all about them? What secrets did he keep that they knew nothing about?

“Anything else you could ascertain?” he asked. “How long did you stay there?”

“Four years, six months, two days,” Five said, repeating what he’d told Allison. “The only thing I found that might be a clue was—” He looked around, realizing for the first time that he didn’t know where his stuff was. Damn, he really was out of it. “Where are my clothes?” he asked, something like panic fluttering in his stomach. “I had things on me that are important, I found something that—”

“Your mother threw away the clothes, as they couldn’t be salvaged. If there were any items on you, I suppose she put them in there,” Dad said, pointing at a cabinet with glass doors.

Five jumped off the bed and rushed to the cabinet. Inside he found bedsheets, bandages, bottled medicine and, in a small drawer set under the middle shelf, Vanya’s book, his notes on time-travel, Diego’s knife and Luther’s wrapped glass eye, all piled neatly together. Something inside Five crumpled in relief. His hands shook a little as he took the objects and he hoped his dad couldn’t see it. 

“I found this thing,” he said to Dad, holding out to him the glass eye but keeping the book, the notes and the knife pressed against his chest—for some reason, he didn’t want Dad to have too close a look at them.

Dad carefully unwrapped the eye and raised it at eye-level for examination. “And how is this relevant to the end of the world?”

“I found it in—” Five had to pause, his breath suddenly failing him. “In Luther’s hand. Luther’s dead hand.”

“Number One?” Dad asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow, as though he thought Five might know many other Luthers. 

“Yes, well, adult Luther, obviously. He was dead. I—I also found Diego, Allison and Klaus. I know it was them because of the tattoo. They were buried under the ruins of the Academy.”

“What makes you think that their deaths, or this eye, have anything to do with the end of the world?”

The spark of fury that ignited in his lungs came as a shock. It’d been a long time since Five had felt such a sharp, brutal emotion. “Because they must have been fighting whoever caused the Apocalypse! Isn’t it what you trained us for, Dad? There was flesh around the eye, like Luther had ripped it right out of that person’s socket. Why else would he have done that?”

“I’ll take your remarks under consideration,” Dad said noncommittally. 

Breathing through his anger, Five watched his father wrap the glass eye again and put it away in his pocket with a keen sense of loss. It was stupid, because what else could he do with the eye but give it to Dad and hope he’d take care of it, but this was one of the few objects that hadn’t left his person in over four years. 

“I’ll let you go back to your room, Number Five,” Dad said. “Your mother has put together a few uniforms your new size. She’ll feed you on a special diet until you’ve recovered all the nutrients necessary to your health, and you’ll resume your training once you’re fit enough. One last thing, though.”

“Yeah?” Five asked. He was eager to be out of the infirmary and out of his dad’s presence, but he forced himself to wait.

“Don’t tell your siblings about the end of the world. Not yet, at least.”

“What? Why hide it from them? Isn't the Umbrella Academy going to stop it?”

“I will let them know about it when I deem them ready. You said that the end of the world will happen in 2019. There’s no reason to rush. I suppose that having talked to your mother and Number Three, you’re not without knowing that we lost Number Six last week. Team unity was thoroughly shaken by this unfortunate event. No need to give your siblings more reasons to be upset.”

A rush of cold washed over Five. In a way, what Dad said sounded sensible, but it was the cool way he’d referred to Ben’s death that made Five sick. Had Dad talked about him the same way when he’d gone missing? Had he cared about it beyond what it had meant for the team?

“Fine,” he said, too tired to even think about arguing. “I won’t tell them.”

—-

Waking up in his old room in the morning, putting on his old clothes—or a resized version of them, since they fit him perfectly—was an experience almost as surreal as landing in the Apocalypse had been. The difference was that it felt like a good dream rather than a nightmare, but he’d lived inside a waking nightmare for so long that the good dream felt _too_ good to be true. He knotted his tie with fingers that didn’t quite feel like his own, then ran them through his now short hair—Mom had swung by his room last night and cut it back to what it had been when he left. It would almost be as though the past few years hadn’t happened if not for the few inches he’d grown, the way his skin was pulled taut over his bones, the scar on his leg from where he’d scraped it on a twisted metal bar and had subsequently almost died of septicemia, and the new terrible memories crammed in his head. 

Coming down to the underground kitchen for breakfast overwhelmed him with such nostalgia that he didn’t realize he hadn’t come across any of the others in the staircase. When he got there, Vanya was alone at the kitchen table while Mom made bacon sizzle in a pan, humming to herself.

“Good morning, dear!” Mom said when he came in.

Vanya dropped her spoon in her bowl and said, “Five!” Her eyes were wide and her mouth gaping.

“Good morning, Mom. Good morning, Vanya.”

Bowls, plates, glasses and cutlery were set on the table for six people, even though Vanya was the only one there, sitting at the end as she always had. Five went to his old seat next to hers and swallowed against the lump in his throat as he sat down. Vanya was still staring at him, her eyes unblinking, but like with Allison, he didn’t know how to act or what to say. He’d missed her _so much_ , and being there was a miracle that he still couldn’t fully believe in, but to make any gesture toward her or acknowledge how long it had been since they’d last seen each other might be the final straw that’d break him. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and sipped it slowly; the smell from the cooking bacon made him so hungry that he felt nauseous. 

“Here you go, Five,” Mom said, sliding bacon and scrambled eggs from her pan into his plate. “Eat this while I slice fruit for your oatmeal. Do you prefer apples or strawberries?”

“Uh,” Five said, the notion of having to choose between _apples_ and _strawberries_ as excruciating as if he’d been asked which of his hands he wanted to give up. 

“Both it is, then!” Mom said brightly. “I won’t give you too much of it, but you’ll get a snack in three hours. We’ve got to put some meat back on those bones!”

All too aware of Vanya’s eyes on him, Five felt himself redden. He drank more of his orange juice, as thoughts of the food made his hands shake—he wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to control himself once he’d start eating. He heard Vanya wet her lips and even four years later, remembered it as a tell-tale sign that his sister was psyching herself up to speak.

He expected her to ask him where he’d been, like Allison had, but instead her first question was, “Are you okay?”

“What?” That surprised him into looking at her and the genuine concern in her expression was a punch to the sternum. 

“Mom said you would get a snack in three hours, but we never get snacks. And you look…”

Five hadn’t had the opportunity to look at himself in a proper mirror yet. He’d caught glimpses in the windows and the glass doors of the cabinet at the infirmary but had shied away from giving them a closer look. He knew he’d lost a lot of weight, of course; he’d watched the flesh melt away from his hands, arms and ribs over the years. The idea of seeing himself made him queasy, nagging him with a secret fear that he wouldn’t recognize himself in the skinny, pitiful starved child that Mom and Vanya were obviously seeing.

“I’m fine, just… haven’t eaten well in a while. Where are the others?” he asked. “Aren’t they up yet?”

“Oh, they’re just training,” Vanya said.

“This early?”

Vanya blinked, looking taken aback, then said, “Right, there was no morning training when you left. Dad started to make them train in the morning a couple of years ago.”

“What time do they start training?”

“At six, I think,” Vanya said. 

She sounded unconcerned, as though it didn’t make any difference to her. When Five had left, wake up time had been 6:30 and they’d only trained in the afternoons, after their classes. How much harder had Dad been working the others? With a touch of guilt, Five wondered if it was his absence and his insubordination that had made his father double down on his siblings.

“So you eat all your breakfasts alone?” he asked Vanya.

Her expression tightened into something that Five didn’t recognize. She picked up her spoon and started eating her oatmeal again, and it was only after she’d had a few mouthfuls that she replied, “They’ll be here soon.”

“Oh.” 

New pangs of pain were added to hunger and nausea, twisting Five’s stomach. He looked down at his plate again, at the garish colors of the cooked bacon, shiny with grease, at the pallid fluff of scrambled eggs. Despite his hunger and how great he remembered his mom’s cooking to be, the thought of eating the whole plate was overwhelming. 

“Aren’t you eating?” Vanya asked, sounding worried. “You should eat, Five.”

Five grabbed a fork, which felt like it weighed a ton, but was caught off guard by the sounds of echoing voices drifting up to them. He didn’t quite recognize those voices, most of them deeper than he remembered, but they couldn’t belong to anyone but his brothers. He put down his fork. His mouth had dried and he reached for his glass again, wanting to moisture it. 

Allison and Luther came in first, closely followed by Diego, and then by Klaus, who lagged far behind. They were all taller, of course, especially Luther. He’d always been the tallest of them, but now he was positively towering over everyone else, probably taller than Dad himself, though he was still leanly built and nothing like the hulking beast whose dead body Five had found in the Apocalypse. Pulling him out of the rubbles had taken Five almost half a day and he’d been tempted to give up multiple times.

Vanya gasped when Five’s glass slipped from his fingers and whatever orange juice it had left spread over the table. In an instant, Mom was there with paper towel, cleaning the mess. 

“Sorry,” Five mumbled. 

“No worries, dear.”

The others had stopped at the opening and were looking at him. It didn’t seem like they’d expected him to be there. They looked at Five and Five looked at them, wordlessly; time was suspended as Five’s heart pounded against his ribs. Klaus was the first to move, sauntering up to Five with his hands in his pockets and then dropping on the chair next to him. As he leaned into Five and draped an arm around his shoulders, Five could smell on him something that he’d only ever smelled on Klaus, though he was surprised that Klaus had been smoking weed this early in the morning and that this had somehow gone past Dad. He tried not to think of dead Klaus’ arm, of the black lines of his tattoo, stark on his pale skin.

“Heeeyyy, Five, brother,” Klaus said, poking him in the cheek. “It really _is_ you. Damn, you’re so skinny. Sell your secret during Fashion Week and you’ll be a rich man. Where the hell have you been all this time? Cruising through the centuries? Slitting Hitler’s throat?”

“Leave him alone, Klaus,” Luther said. “Give him space.”

Klaus slipped off from Five. “Pardon me, Your Highness,” he said, his voice tinged with irony. “I should have known better than to act excited at the return of our lost brother.”

Luther flushed and pinched his mouth, then sat in his own chair across from Allison, who gave Five a small rueful smile, almost apologetic. Diego came up behind Klaus, slapping the back of his head. “This is my seat, asshole,” he said.

“Oh, right. I’ll let you catch up with Five, then.”

The note of malice in Klaus’ tone was hard to interpret. Diego clenched his jaw and sat down without a look at Five. The tension at the table was palpable, even though they all mostly ignored each other as Mom served them their breakfast. Vanya had barely glanced up when the others had come in and acted as though no one else was in the room with her, not even Five. The rest of his siblings were shooting him quick glances, but furtively, as if they didn’t want God knows who to see them do it. Five felt at a complete loss on what was going on; petty squabbling and more serious fights had always been common among his family, but the level of antagonism permeating the room right now was something he didn’t remember from four years ago. Was it because of him? It made him want to excuse himself and run back to his room, which was stupid. In the last four years, he had desired nothing but to be back with his siblings. To lose them, to not know whether he’d ever be able to find his way back to them, had been more excruciating than anything in his life before. But in all his dreams of reuniting with his family, he’d never imagined that it could be like this. He hadn’t anticipated his siblings being so distant, or his own awkwardness at facing them. Had he been gone for too long?

He examined them as furtively as they examined him. They looked tired, even though it was barely 8 o’clock. Klaus was ignoring his food in favor of resting his head on a pillow of his crossed arms. Allison stifled a yawn and Five caught Luther wincing a few times, always quickly suppressing it. The minutes dragged, and no one talked until Luther finally said, “So, uh, where did you go?”

“Oh, we’re allowed to ask questions now?” Klaus said, then yelped when Allison kicked him under the table. 

“The future,” Five said. He put a piece of bacon in his mouth and started to chew it very slowly. 

“When in the future?” 

Hadn’t Allison told them about their conversation? He’d assumed she would. “April 2019. I stayed there for four years, six months, two days.”

“The future?” Luther said. “It must have been…” He trailed off, as though looking for the right word. “Fun.”

Five contained a grimace. “Not particularly, no.”

“Were you living in the streets?” Klaus asked. “Because you looked like a hobo when you came back. What, it’s true,” he added in a lower voice, even though no one had said anything.

“Kind of, yes,” Five said, then cleared his throat. He wanted the attention off of him, especially since he couldn’t tell them the truth, so he asked, “What happened to Ben?”

Heavy silence followed. He probably could have timed that particular question better, but it was too late to regret it now. Vanya’s book hadn’t given any details about Ben’s death, because she hadn’t been present for it and had apparently never been told the full story. When he’d thought he would come back before it happened, that hadn’t mattered too much. Five had assumed that it would be enough to tell Dad when the mission happened for it to be cancelled and Ben to be saved. Now that he’d failed to prevent it, he felt a morbid need to know the particulars. 

Diego dropped his fork and knife in his plate and pushed back his chair. “Yeah, I’m not hungry anymore. Sorry, Mom.”

He had stormed away before Mom had even the time to turn from the stove. The others exchanged looks. When Vanya spoke, it took everyone by surprise. “They won’t tell you,” she said. “Or maybe it’s just me that they don’t want to say anything to.”

“What?” Luther said. “No, it’s not that we don’t _want_ to say anything.”

“I’m finished with breakfast, Mom,” Vanya said before Luther could say anything else. “I’ll get ready for our lessons.”

“Of course, Vanya dear,” Mom said, her smile untouched by the electricity in the air. 

Once Vanya was gone, Five turned to the others and asked, “What’s going on with her?”

“Eh, who knows,” Klaus said, raising his head from his arms.

“I think maybe she—“ Allison started.

“We’re not hiding anything,” Luther said at about the same time, speaking over her. “If you want the story of what happened to Ben, we’ll tell you. Just—just not right now.”

“Yeah, all right,” Five said. He went back to eating, but his insides were so tightly knotted that he couldn’t even feel hunger anymore.


End file.
